Fly Away Home
Fly Away Home is a family drama film directed by Carroll Ballard based on the book Father Goose, an autobiography by Canadian artist and inventor Bill Lishman. It was released at the Toronto International Film Festival by Columbia Pictures on September 13, 1996. Synopsis Thirteen-year-old Amy Alden is taking a drive with her mother Aliane on a rainy night in New Zealand. A distracted Aliane is speaking on her cellular phone when a truck crashes into the car, sending it tumbling across the road. Amy wakes up in the hospital the next day. Her estranged father Thomas Alden is there, telling her he’s come from Canada to take her home. By this, Amy understands her mother has died. On a spring evening a month later, the Aldens arrive on Thomas’ farm in Ontario. The house is a mess filled with the artists’ sculptures and contraptions. Amy is fascinated by the new place but is cold and distant with her father. She doesn’t remember anything, having only lived there the three first years of her life. In the morning, Amy draws the curtain and sees her father flying a hang glider. She rushes out of the house for a better view. She is amazed at the sight, but when her father lands clumsily, screaming out with delight, Amy runs back into the house, glancing at him with scorn. She later joins him in an old barn converted into a shop. Thomas is working on a large iron dragon and tells Amy he is behind in his work and will be busy for the next few days. Amy replies she is not a baby and walks away. She finds herself in the upper part of the barn where a Lunar Lander replica has been stored away. She later asks her father about it as he is preparing lunch, and the man explains he thought it was a shame that the original Lunar Lander had been left on the moon and felt they needed another one. He also reveals he was working on it when Aliane left, taking Amy with her, probably thinking he was crazy for doing it. He admits to it, recalling they were penniless at the time. A red-haired woman appears in the doorway. Thomas introduces her as his friend Susan. Susan hands Amy a welcome gift of feather earrings, but when Amy realises she is her father’s girlfriend and will be part of her new life, she excuses herself and climbs upstairs. She opens her tuba case, looking at childhood photographs decorating the inside of the case. She is now remembering moments spent in Ontario but is mostly associating them with her lost mother. A grieving Amy starts wandering aimlessly around the farm while her father is working at the shop. One morning, a depressed Amy tells her father she’s not going to school, and she’d rather die than go back there. She still pretends to go but hides in the tall grasses and continues wandering around. She approaches a marsh where many trees have been uprooted by a development team. Finding sixteen Canada goose eggs among the rubble, Amy decides to bring them home, converting an old drawer into a makeshift incubator on the upper part of the barn. As the eggs are soon to hatch, Amy gets up early in the morning to run to the barn before school, but she is stopped in her tracks by a funny blonde man lying on the couch. He introduces himself as his uncle David. Thomas comes down the stairs explaining his brother has come to give him a hand with his sculpture. Amy doesn’t have time to go to the barn as the school bus starts honking and the girl has to run to catch it. The geese hatch while she is in class and she sneaks out in the evening to check on their progress. Cast Thomas Alden : Jeff Daniels Amy Alden : Anna Paquin Susan Barnes : Dana Delany David Alden : Terry Kinney Barry Strickland : Holter Graham Glen Seifert : Jeremy Ratchford Olin Hatfield : Michael J. Reynold Aliane : Deborah Verginella Crew Gallery Amy Alden Stream Grasses Ontario.jpg Thomas Alden Portrait.jpg Thomas Alden Amy Alden Goslings Kitchen.jpg Thomas Alden Glider Still.jpg Amy Alden Portrait Fly Away Home.jpg Wikia-Visualization-Add-7,flyawayhome.png Amy Alden Susan Barnes Thomas Alden.jpg Susan Barnes Shop.jpg North Carolina Crowd Barry Strickland Susan Barnes Thomas Alden David Alden.jpg Awards and nominations Production notes *Rights to Bill Lishman's story were purchased by Columbia Pictures in 1994 after 20/20 aired a segment on the Canadian inventor piloting his ultralight aircraft followed by a flock of geese in 1993. *''Fly Away Home'' never had a complete, definite script to begin with. Bill Lishman's work and writings were the main inspiration, and a story was elaborated around this. Jeff Daniels initially felt this was "movie suicide," but it actually allowed actors to create their own character and improvise with dialogue, often resulting in casual humour and realistic conversations. Working with wild geese also generated many unexpected situations and the story was made to accomodate this. Producer Carol Baum recalls: "We really wanted to capture the essence of Bill Lishman's character because he is larger than life, but we had to make a movie of it. So we invented a story about a girl who lost her mother and who reunites with her father. That is made up. In real life, Bill has a wife and a nice family. But when you make a movie, you have to create situations that allow for the growth of the characters." *Pilot doubles stood in for Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin who never flew the aircrafts themselves, only handled them on the ground. Close-ups of the actors flying the planes were shot in front of a green screen and were later added to images shot during the actual flying by pilot doubles. Helmets and heavy equipment allowed for an easy dissimulation of the doubles' faces. *Some 60 Canada geese were used for filming since the goslings grew and changed too rapidly for the same flock to be used for the whole production.